Femicide of Anahí Benítez: Marcelo Villalba sentenced to life imprisonment

The Justice of Lomas de Zamora sentenced Marcelo Villalba to life imprisonment and acquitted Marcos Bazán for the femicide of Anahí Benítez, which occurred in 2017 in the Buenos Aires town of Llavallol. They found Villalba guilty of the crimes of robbery and aggravated sexual abuse by carnal access, as an actor, and by aggravated illegal deprivation of liberty, and homicide criminis causa aggravated by treachery for mediating gender violence, as a co-author.  With respect to Bazán, the Court determined that he is innocent of the “aggravated illegal deprivation of liberty, aggravated homicide for treachery, criminis causa and for mediating gender violence” as a co-author and as a necessary participant in “aggravated sexual abuse by carnal access”. Although the reading of the sentence was scheduled for 12 this Tuesday, it began after 13.30 because the virtual system had fallen so the three judges had to sign all the pages of the ruling manually. The trial took place after the first one in which, also within the scope of TOC 7, judges Roberto Lugones, Elisa López Moyano and Roberto Corti had sentenced both men to life imprisonment was annulled. The Buenos Aires Court of Cassation ordered a new trial because it considered that the magistrates had been partial in their resolution. It was the First Chamber of Cassation of Buenos Aires that ruled against and in 2021 ordered a new trial with new integration. In this way Bazán reached the resolution in freedom, while Villalba entered the room as the main accused of femicide. Manuel Garrido, Marcos Bazán’s lawyer, said that during the new trial “it was proven that Marcos Bazán is totally innocent.”  “They targeted him because he was a hippie who lived on the reservation and that’s why the police found him suspicious,” added the lawyer of the man who had just been acquitted. Garrido indicated that his client “was proven to have nothing to do with Villalba, there or with the rest of the suspects.” “Marcos was left with a trauma for all these years in detention,” Garrido added in statements to the press. Benítez was last seen on July 29, 2017 when she left her home in Parque Barón, in Lomas de Zamora, for a walk. From that moment she began a search against the clock that ended almost a week later when she was found buried with the naked body, cutting injuries and blows to the head. Despite the fact that in the trial there are two accused as co-authors of the femicide, Anahí’s mother maintains that more people acted in the case: “I am sure that six days of kidnapping, rape and torture were not done by just two people, who say the names of all those who participated.” The autopsy determined that she was strangled, that she had been given drugs and that, in those conditions, she had been abused.

Original source in Spanish